ABSTRACT
A hot topic in philosophy of memory is the status of observer memories. How can a genuine episodic memory involve the rememberer as an object in the remembered scene? Observer memories seem to be false or otherwise distorted episodic memories. Some voices have been raised against this seemingly straightforward view. Recently, McCarroll has offered new arguments in favour of the idea that observer memories should be legitimately considered as episodic memories, grounding it on an analysis of the perspectivality of imagination (i.e., the fact that, similarly to memory, imagination somehow involves a self or “point of view”). McCarroll argues against accounts that tie imagination to the experienceable, on the grounds that they presuppose an experiencer in the imaginary world, and thus an occupied point of view. According to him, these accounts lend force to the idea that observer memories are not genuine memories, if we take for granted that episodic memories rely on imagination so construed. In this chapter, I will consider how McCarroll’s worries can be used against one of the most promising theories of the imagination, recreativism. My goal is to block this kind of move while agreeing with McCarroll’s main tenet that observer memories are genuine memories. More precisely, I will show that, although recreativism links imagination to the experienceable, it is not committed to positing a “full-blooded” occupied point of view from which the imagined scene is “experienced”. I will do this through a thorough analysis of the imaginative realm, of how experiences and the self (and different types of self) can be involved in our imaginings. I will focus on different strategies open to the recreativist, bringing to the fore the importance of the imagination for a careful study of memory.
